


A Very Long Holiday

by Elvendork



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Adventures, Fellowship of the Ring, Gen, Homesickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 16:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6057964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvendork/pseuds/Elvendork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Bilbo is homesick. Terribly, painfully homesick, which makes no sense at all because The Shire </i>is<i> his home.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Long Holiday

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not too pleased with the final section of this, but it's another one of those snapshots that wouldn't leave my head. The first half came quite easily; the latter half I'm less keen on, but I couldn't not write it.

It takes Bilbo a long time to recognise the persistent ache in his chest for what it really is. At first he puts it down to age; all part and parcel of the stretching and thinning he is beginning to blame on his steadily advancing years. It is weeks before he finally manages to put a different label on it.

Bilbo is homesick. Terribly, painfully homesick, which makes no sense at all because The Shire _is_ his home. In all his long life he has never lived anywhere else, certain extended adventures with dwarves notwithstanding. He loves The Shire; he loves it fiercely, peacefully, the way only a hobbit can. He loves it protectively – _watchfully_ – the way only one who has seen the grim detail of life Outside can. He loves it helplessly, because he has never been able to do anything else.

Still, he is not happy. Only when he comes across a bundle of old maps – their parchment dry and cracked, so delicate that he hardly dares unroll them – does the realisation hit him.

He does not want to be here. He is a Baggins of Bag End, but it is time someone else became _the_ Baggins of Bag End. Bilbo needs… something different.

Once, long ago, he felt torn in two by a similar emotion; a similar decision. He left half his heart in Erebor with what remained of Thorin’s Company, but the other half has always – until now – been firmly rooted in The Shire and the gentle rolling hills of his youth. 

Now, though… he yearns for something different. He doesn’t, at first, know _what_. He only knows that he has outstayed his welcome here – or here has outstayed its welcome with him. He ponders on it for weeks, months, before his mind is finally made up.

He falls asleep at night and dreams of damp, cold campsites and bedrolls that smell of wet pony no matter what he does. Whispers of half-forgotten songs curl through his slumbering mind and linger for hours after he wakes. He opens his eyes to find himself disappointed to be warm and dry, safe and comfortable in the drowsy silence of his beloved hobbit hole.

He knows he is old, no matter that he certainly doesn’t look it. He knows that such reckless thoughts of adventure are the purview of only the very youngest, most foolhardy Tooks, and then only tolerated until sensibility and adulthood set in – certainly never, ever encouraged by the more respectable hobbit families.

He also knows that he cannot stand to stay in The Shire for even another year, no matter that he still loves it as much as he ever did. He needs to get out, he needs… something. He wants to go _home_ , and no one is more lost than him when it comes to working out precisely where home _is_ anymore.

He has time for one more Journey, he reasons. He will settle down then, he will stop all this ridiculous preoccupation with adventures and retire to finish his book. He will tell stories and write songs and live a quiet, eccentric life somewhere far away – perhaps Rivendell.

He will do all that. He longs for it, in his own way; for the solitude and calm of the elves, and no more of this bustling around entertaining distant relatives all day, every day, listening to their jibes and their suspicions, their merry ignorant amusement at what half of them surely think are stories from his own peculiar imagination. They hardly seem to consider the possibility that every word is _true_.

First and foremost, though, he itches for one last burst of excitement. One last celebration – commemoration he supposes – of that long ago Unexpected Journey. He wants to see _mountains_ again; wild, bitterly cold mountains, their towering snow-capped peaks larger than anything he had ever seen or imagined before. He wants to see great rushing rivers in tumultuous storms, huge swathes of water that put The Shire’s homely little streams to thorough shame. He wants to feel that thrill of cold terror that comes when wolves are howling in the distance; when you know, for a moment, that the most alive you can ever feel is when you are an inch from death.

He yearns for that danger, that unpredictability, that strange sense of comfort that comes from knowing that all you need concern yourself with is survival. He needs the freedom, the vast open world with its thousand untamed treasures – he needs, in short, a holiday.

He begins planning in secret, careful to avoid letting Frodo discover his thoughts. He soothes his conscience with the knowledge that Frodo, still far too in love with The Shire to happily depart, is almost of age now and fully old enough to look after himself.

Bilbo will leave his young cousin everything, and hope it goes some way to making up for his departure, for this holiday is likely to be a very long one.

In fact, Bilbo doubts that he will ever return.

He is old, and it is time to go.


End file.
